Great Birth!

by Vlad

February 2006

Wow! It’s amazing how much one little person can turn your lives upside down in just one week! Contractions started at 3:00 AM Monday morning, February 13th, letting us know the beginning of the end of the pregnancy was near. They were bearable from 3:00 AM until about 2:00 PM, so Joy was able to get some more sleep, do chores around the house and work on herb orders.

I can count with one hand the amount of families that we know of in this community that have had their children outside the home. That was one of the pluses of this community that I considered when I moved here. A number of our non-Amish friends had recommended that we try the “Bradley Method” (Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way). After reading the book, we thought we should give it a shot and so for a number of months before the birth, Joy worked on the exercises, stretches, etc. recommended in the book. After seeing her deal with all her contractions, we were both convinced that the Bradley method works.

Around 2:00 PM, the contractions intensified and became longer and more painful. Joy was still dealing with each contraction the “Bradley Way” by simply pausing, relaxing, and controlling her breathing. Amazing!!! It was about that same time that she started to bleed excessively. I called a friend to bring over Mary, the Amish midwife from the community that we had asked to be with us during the birth. She arrived around 3:00 PM, and quickly took notice of Joy’s bleeding, and checked to see if she was dilated. To our dismay, she could not feel the cervix at all, which led us to conclude that she had not yet begun dilating. Mary expressed her concern over being at home with such unusual hemorrhaging, and suggested we go somewhere for professional medical attention. Joy had always wanted to have her children born at home. She has been present at, and heard of experiences at hospitals that led her to this conclusion. I’ve always been of the mind that pregnancy and birth are a natural process of life that should not be viewed as a medical procedure. Neither one of us is opposed to children being born at a hospital, but both of us were very uncomfortable with the thought of sharing such a private and intimate moment with strangers, despite their qualifications.

After Mary had expressed her concern, and Joy and I discussed it, I called 2 midwives for counsel. Both expressed a great deal of concern based on how I described the situation and suggested seeking medical assistance. But, one of them used specific wording by saying, “If you can’t stop the bleeding, you should take her somewhere.” Something clicked in my head when she used the word, “if”. I told Joy what they said, and she suggested that I give her Cayenne powder in grape juice to drink (the juice eases the burning). We had read in a number of resources that cayenne has been used internally to stop hemorrhaging. By this time, it was about 4:00 PM, and Mary, thinking we were going to go somewhere for assistance, had already packed up all her stuff. When she noticed that we were attempting to stop the bleeding with Cayenne, she suggested using Cinnamon internally as well. I quickly gave Joy some Cinnamon sticks to chew on. Then, I boiled some Cinnamon sticks in water for her to drink as a tea and gave her a tablespoon of Cinnamon powder in water for her to drink. After all these efforts, I prayed with my Joy and decided to wait.

During this entire time, Mary had been monitoring the baby’s heartbeat to see if he was being affected by the bleeding. His heartbeat was normal. Around 5:00 PM, we noticed that the bleeding had slowed down. This was a great relief to us all. Shortly afterwards, the contractions intensified one last time, and we entered the pushing stage. Mary checked Joy once again and found she was fully dilated. Awesome! This meant the baby would soon be born. When the pushing started, I called a friend, and asked him to fetch Mary’s daughter to assist us, as we were both quite busy trying to manage the blood and make preparations for the baby’s arrival while giving Joy support.

Up until the pushing began, Joy amazed me with her ability to deal with each contraction. When the pushing started however, she began to moan and verbalize her pain. Mary and I encouraged her to be as loud as she liked, and how it would soon be over. To sum up the next 1:45 minutes, I can say, I am glad to be a male! My Joy fits the description quite well of a meek and quiet woman. During the pushing stage, however, I got to see a side of her that I’ve never seen before. I had imagined that this stage was painful, but I had no idea to what degree. My Joy went from begging for mercy between pushes, to screaming her head off. After a while, Mary was with all her strength using both hands to stretch open the birthing canal. Boy, that hurt. The head was visible, but for a long while, would not make any further progress. After a while of Joy’s pushing and Mary’s stretching, and trying a few different positions, the head was finally out a few minutes to 7:00 PM. The body quickly followed in the next push. I got a surprise when the body came out with all the warm liquid that went all over my leg and foot. All the towels and hospital pads that we had on the floor couldn’t contain all the blood and water that followed the baby.

Joy spent most of the pushing stage on the floor of our living room. She rested there for about 20 minutes after the baby was born. Then, we helped her up to push out the after birth, and it came very quickly with minimal effort. After seeing some pictures of other woman after giving birth, I was amazed at how good Joy looked. She looked perfectly normal. Unbelievable. I called mom after we cleaned up the mess to come over. She too commented on how good Joy looked.

The baby had little to no mucus on him, but a good deal of blood in his mouth and nose, which Mary said was a bit unusual. Besides fussing a little bit while the blood was removed, he never cried until about 2 days after he was born. He is now 7 days old and we rarely hear him cry. He weighed about 6.5 pounds and was 19 inches long. Joy prayed that he would weigh between 6 and 7 pounds. He has lots of dark hair, dark eyes, and enough of a tan to make me proud. We never had an ultrasound done, and had no idea of the baby’s gender. We spent some time trying to come up with names for a boy and a girl, but only had a few girl names picked out. We still don’t have a name for him, but are committed to coming up with one before our next baby is born.

My Joy is amazing. During the entire pregnancy, she maintained a great attitude and insisted on keeping up with her responsibilities in our home and in our business. Many a man in our community have commented to me how lucky I am to have her. Many women are challenged by Joy’s accomplishments. She is my buddy and hero.

We never found out the cause of all the bleeding, nor do we know for certain whether the herbs or the prayer or both, caused it to slow down. We do know that having babies is God’s idea. We hope to have the next one at home, as well. We are privileged to witness God’s wonder in marriage everyday, and now, also in pregnancy and childbirth. We are overwhelmed at His goodness towards us. Jesus: the giver and sustainer of life. Praise Him!!!

Return to Articles

Comments

Comment on this article.

Customer Feedback view all

Thanks for the great products! You guys did a wonderful job & we received it as expected & very quickly. The products are great & we appreciate it so much!

Thanks & God Bless!
Joni H.